Posts from — January 2012

Husher’s T-shirts.

Help publish the Urban Farm Manifesto

By Justin Husher
On Rockethub

The Urban Farm Manifesto is a 20-page comic-zine with essay elements that chronicles some of my surreal experiences during the last three years of growing in the wilds of western Cleveland; and then combines it with socio-cultural commentary on food sovereignty versus the corporate food system, the politics of local food, and other seemingly disparate topics like “the Small-Mart Revolution” and permits. It’s about the modern aesthetics of urban farming. I liken it to the Four Elements of Hip Hop.

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“The goal is for the resource to be continually growing with high quality advice on how to earn a living farming in the city”

By Gavin Walsh

“Urbanpatches will be a place where successful urban farmers can post what they’ve learned and their ‘best practices’ for running their farms. It’s designed so farmers can easily login (via Facebook) and add a post with their tips and strategies for running their farm successfully. It’s designed to be a resource and a way for urban farmers to share their knowledge with each other in one location.

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See full page image here. (2.2MB)

“When a farmer within the city limits is making $30,000 yearly out of potatoes alone, it is time to think of vacant lots in connection with the cost of living”

The New York Tribune Magazine
Jan. 14, 1917

Excerpt:

In the three metropolitan boroughs of New York – Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn – Brooklyn alone has vacant land suitable for farming and gardening purposes. The Brooklyn land has been used for hundreds of years or more by farmers, beginning with the old Dutch landsmen, and the soil has been made productive by constant fertilization. In Manhattan there are practically no vacant lots. The vacant lots in the Bronx are fast disappearing and what remain are rocky and unproductive. In Queens there are acres and acres of vacant land, but Queens to all intents and purposes is still a rural district. Brooklyn, therefore, is the only part of the metropolitan section of New York City that contains farmlands and truck gardens.

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“The community was ready for a garden like this. It was just the right idea at the right time.”

By Michelle Pak,
NRCS Idaho
January 23, 2012

Excerpt:

Eric Moore had a vision to grow a garden outside his office window. Moore, an employee of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Idaho, works at the USDA Service Center in Gooding.

For years, the back part of the Service Center property was vacant and covered in weeds. Looking at that weed patch always bothered Moore. So he was excited when he got permission from the landlord to start a garden there last year.

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Meir Lazar is reflected in a tank he uses to raise tilapia at his home in the Baltimore suburb of Pikesville. Photo by Lloyd Fox.

Baltimore-area aquaponic farmers raise seafood and vegetables in a quest for self-sustainability and better health.

By Timothy B. Wheeler
The Baltimore Sun via LA Times
January 28, 2012

Excerpt:

The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates.

Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round.

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Photo by Shottty.

Seen on a London balcony next to Regent’s Canal.

Wherever there is grass, there is a chance to put food on the table.

Urban Roots – Film
Directed by Mark MacInnis
Produced by Leila Conners
Film 2011

URBAN ROOTS is a documentary that tells the story of the spontaneous emergence of urban farming in the city of Detroit. Detroit, once an industrial powerhouse of a lost American era, is a city devastated by the loss of half its population due to the collapse of manufacturing. By the looks of it, the city has died. But now, against all odds, in the empty lots, in the old factory yards, and in-between the sad, sagging blocks of company housing, seeds of change are taking root. With the most vacant lots in the country, citizens are reclaiming their spirits by growing food. A small group of dedicated citizens have started an urban environmental movement with the potential to transform not just a city after its collapse, but also a country after the end of its industrial age.

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Richmond Heights, Ohio, resident Martinez Garcias has completed four comic books in his “Brink City: Green in the Ghetto” series and will soon begin work on the fifth instalment in the series. Photo by Andy Attina.

Brink City will be a 12-part comic book series when it’s completed.

By Andy Attina
Cleveland.com
January 27, 2012,

Excerpt:

He wrote the first of four comic books, titled “Brink City: Green in the Ghetto.” Brink is used as a generic name for similar cities all around the country.

The comics have dealt mostly with urban farming, as Rid-All runs greenhouses in Cleveland. They were geared toward inner-city youths, but Garcias wanted them to be more versatile and appeal to kids in the suburbs, as well.

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In planting the garden, the hotel also wishes to sow seeds of change, creating Montréal’s first downtown hotel rooftop garden.

By Quebecgetaways,
September 9, 2011

Excerpt:

It isn’t possible to visit this secret garden. But guests at the hotel can already taste the difference in their plates. Since the month of May, the garden has already provided different kinds of eggplant, plum tomatoes, beets, peppers, Swiss chard, endive, radishes, zucchini, Montréal melons and several kinds of mint and basil for amazing results!

This urban garden gets perfect sun for growing food. The hotel has opted for a container culture technique developed by experts from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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“SFUAA get emails from folks all over the bay area and the entire country – Oakland, Burlington, [Washington] D.C., Chicago – all actively seeking information. That’s perhaps biggest change since ordinance passed – visibility,”

By Catherine Adams
Fog City Journal
January 27, 2012

Excerpt:

San Francisco took a bold step in 2011 further legitimizing urban agriculture in the city. With the passage of the Planning Code Amendment on Urban Agriculture (ordinance 66-11), commercial garden and small farm sites are now legal city-wide. The ordinance received unanimous support from the Board of Supervisors in April before it was approved by Mayor Ed Lee.

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“Lots of Green” Youngstown, Ohio.

“People are starting to see land reuse as a new approach to neighborhood revitalization in post-industrial cities,”

By Lee Chilcote
Hive City Media
January 15, 2012

Excerpt:

Since Lots of Green launched in the summer of 2010, the program has reclaimed more than 150 urban lots (about 17 acres of city land). Some completed projects include community gardens, side yard expansions, pocket parks, a storm water mitigation demonstration site, a block-long soil research site and a 2.5 acre urban farm.

“We now have five community gardens with over 100 registered gardeners,” Presley says. “We’re igniting innovative projects and empowering residents to get involved.”

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“Grow – Episode 6” – Excellent series!

‘Farmtina’ – When Martina put a few cucumbers in pots on her balcony in Brooklyn, New York, she had no idea where it would grow from there. A creative spirit helps her face the challenges of city gardening, such as space…and soil.

More Grow episodes can be found here.

YWCA Evanston/North Shore.

The YWCA said the program will help empower local women.

By Jessica Rudis
Evanston Patch
Jan 27, 2012

Excerpt:

Colorado based CoBank recently announced that it will contribute $34,000 over the next three years to help the YWCA Evanston/North Shore to support an expansion of their urban farming initiative.

The urban farm started in the spring of 2009, when the YWCA built a small raised bed vegetable and herb garden to grow fresh produce for Mary Lou’s Place, their domestic violence shelter for women and children.

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Sustainable ideas: Above, Dave Carlson in the garden of his home. Carlson runs Common Ground Community Farm in Burnaby, a community supported agriculture project. Photograph by Jason Lang.

Sustainable model of farming brings together growers and consumers

By Christina Myers
Burnaby Now
January 25, 2012

Excerpt:

Last season, he grew dozens of different crops, from herbs to squash and everything in between, and had 17 members. He also sold produce at a number of local farm markets.

This year, he’s hoping to expand his membership to 60, particularly with residents in neighbouring communities like New Westminster, for the 20-week season.

And he may bring in some new “friends” as well.

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Will garden plots adjacent to homes make up for the loss of Oahu’s prime agricultural lands?

It’s a worldwide phenomenon, and one that doesn’t bode well for Mother Earth. Has the “Market” become our lord and master?

By Jack Kelly
The Kona Story
Jan 25, 2012

Excerpt:

The Ho‘opili project on Oahu has come back before the Land Use Commission again. Developer D.H. Horton is seeking rezoning of 1,500 acres of prime agricultural land from Ag to Urban, to allow construction of an 11,750-home subdivision. D.R. Horton first brought the project to the LUC in 2009, but the request was denied because it lacked an adequate timeline for the development.

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A Food project in Chicago, IL

Our vision is to show how rooftop farming is a vital part of the urban agriculture movement to create a sustainable and equitable food system. Join us by helping us grow fruits & vegetables, organically & sustainably on the roof. The rewards for your pledges include options to visit us for a tour, cool gear, fresh produce, and even come by to volunteer on the rooftop!

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See the full page image here. (3.3MB)

Movement all over the country has had a healthy influence in cutting down excessively high price of commodities – 700 acres in St. Louis city lots turned under and cultivated in concerted drive on high cost of living (WW1)

The Agen Standard
Ogden, Utah
June 23, 1917

Excerpt:

The deduction drawn by those who are studying the effect of city gardens is that the city “farmer” can break the back of the high price of any vegetable that he is able to produce himself, if he will. It is to be expected that a failure in any line this year will result in special efforts the following season to protect this line.

The thrift garden, an accidental development of the war, seems to be a fixture in American life, judged by its brief career.

The hundreds who are thriftily producing garden truck where only weeds grew before will not only profit by the cash saving in their foodstuffs, but to a man, boy and woman, they are reaping dividends already in better health, strength and spirits.

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Christina Mwinjipe inspects her cassava crop (Mapinga Village, Tanzania, 2012).

“My annual letter this year is an argument for making the choice to keep on helping extremely poor people build self-sufficiency.” Bill Gates

For Christina and other small farmers—and for hundreds of millions of extremely poor people living in slums in big cities—getting food is the most pressing daily concern. And food is strongly connected to another constant worry: basic health. The lack of adequate nutrition is a key reason why poor children so often die of diseases like diarrhea that richer and better-fed children are able to fight off. Poor nutrition in childhood also prevents the development of both the brain and the body, severely and irreversibly limiting children’s ability to grow, learn, and become healthy, productive adults. Ultimately, there is very little in Christina’s life—or her children’s lives—that doesn’t depend on her cassava crop.

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Aquaponics is ideal for schools, community projects, household self sufficiency and if scaled up, for commercially viable mixed crop food production.

Charlie Price from the social enterprise Aquaponics UK, explores the role aquaponics can play in the future of our collective food supply. He provides an insight into both the applications for aquaponics but more specifically a new approach to urban agriculture, turning wastes into resources and transforming disused urban spaces to provide not only food, but resilient communities.

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Chickens are part of the neighborhood in a portion of Tarzana zoned for residential-agricultural use. A developer wants to build an elder-care facility in the area. Photo by Genaro Molina.

In one of the city’s few residential-agricultural zones, developers want to raze five homes to build a 37,500-square-foot elder-care facility. Neighbors are divided.

By Ann M. Simmons,
Los Angeles Times
January 23, 2012

Excerpt:

A chicken, a raven and a peacock greeted Lisa and Ron Cerda when they moved into their southeastern Tarzana neighborhood almost two decades ago. It was just the sort of bucolic reception the couple hoped for when they fled crowded West Los Angeles for one of the city’s rare residential-agricultural zones, a district that permits farming and the keeping of livestock.

Today, the Cerdas say their rustic neighborhood is threatened with extinction. Schools, synagogues and commercial businesses have crept into the district, despite dogged opposition from dozens of residents.

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